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Shoot the Damn Dog by Sally Brampton

Sally Brampton is an unlikely poster girl for clinical depression. She was the founding editor of British Elle and has written several successful novels. She belongs to a world of glamour and high achievement, fancy lunches and designer clothes. You would not expect to find her curled up under her duvet, immobilised by a storm of sobbing, or chain-smoking in a locked psychiatric ward. You certainly would not expect this alpha female to take an overdose of hoarded tablets because living had become unbearable. The depressive's longing to die, says Brampton, is "not a character failing or moral flaw. Nor is it, truly, a desire to die so much as a fervent wish not to go on living".

Piquantly, she owes her life to one of the most troubling aspects ofher illness. "There is still a common belief," she says, "that depression is simply a chemical imbalance of the mind